Fire Brittle

Ingredients:
Peanut Prittle recipe
2 tsp chipotle powder

Take your favorite peanut brittle recipe. Follow as directed. When at the point of adding peanuts, add chipotle powder. Finish as directed.

The chipotle will add heat in the middle/back of your mouth. For a more front-of-mouth heat, use cayenne powder instead. Or add one teaspoon of each for a little bit of both.

Recipe courtesy of Michael Dambach.

Chicken, Bean & Pasta Salad

Ingredients:
1 (15 oz) can corn
1 (15 oz) can kidney beans
1 (15 oz) can garbanzo beans
1 (15 oz) can black beans
1 (12.5 oz) can chunk chicken
8 oz fusilli (spiral) pasta
salt
pepper
extra virgin olive oil

directions:
cook pasta as directed on package. put cooked pasta into large glass bowl. add cans of drained beans/chicken to bowl. salt and pepper to taste. add a few tablespoons of olive oil, or keep one of the cans un-drained and add that, juice and all. combine. serve hot or cold.

variation:
for a bit of heat/spice add a tablespoon (or more to taste) of your favorite hot sauce like tapatio and mix in.

Yorkies

ingredients:
Brownie mix
mini-muffin pan
York peppermint patties

instructions:
Make your brownie batter according to the instructions. spoon batter into mini-muffin pan (not quite to the top). cut peppermint patty into quarters or thirds, and place them point-down into each . cook about 25 minutes. try to err on the side of over cooking (without burning!) as the mini-muffin pan will create a virtually all-edge brownie... and with a peppermint patty center!

wait until brownies have fully cooled to remove from pan. to help, try slowly twisting them in the pan before removing.

variations:
substitute the peppermint patty with your favorite chocolatey candy: flavored hershey kisses, mint m&ms, white chocolate chunks, carmels, peanut butter cups, etc.

Pummelo Colada

Per serving:
1 oz rum
1 Pummelo fruit / juice
Pinq Colada mix
ice

make your basic pina colada, but substitute 1 oz of the pina colada mix with 1 oz of freshly squeezed pummelo juice (or substitute equal parts mix/juice to taste... depending on your pummelo, you might use a whole fruit worth of juice). don't forget your rum! serve blended or over ice.

the pummelo is sweet grapefruit sized citrus fruit, nicely sweet, not very tart. a pummelo is to a grapefruit, what a meyer lemon is to a lemon.

alternately, you can use any sweet citrus fruit juice... orange, pineapple, meyer lemon, etc.